The Center for Research Libraries recently published an updated version of the “Model Licensing Terms and Specifications for Data Resources." These terms were developed through the pooling of expertise and community input from librarians involved in financial and geospatial data licensing. CRL provides these terms for use in negotiating agreements for large global datasets provided by commercial vendors.

In November 2016, CRL hosted the inaugural eDesiderata Forum on the topic of licensing large databases and datasets (the event description includes background readings, presentation slides, and a summary report). Guided by the findings of the 2016 Forum, CRL developed a set of terms and specifications recommended for inclusion in data acquisition licenses to facilitate more successful, informative, and mutually constructive agreements with vendors of global data resources.

In 2018 CRL shared a proposed draft of these terms, and invited the community to provide feedback and pose questions, facilitating a virtual discussion regarding strategies for licensing and providing access to global data resources. CRL updated the terms based on the feedback received during the review period. Both the current and previous versions can be found here.

CRL welcomes input on the current version. Feedback can be submitted on the PDF document filed in Google Drive, using the in-line commenting function. Comments will influence future revisions made to the document.